[HN Gopher] Apple bans accounts of developers from Belarus
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Apple bans accounts of developers from Belarus
Author : ameshkov
Score : 147 points
Date : 2022-02-05 19:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (developer.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (developer.apple.com)
| nix23 wrote:
| Oh that's a nice move from apple to bring developers from
| Belarus, Russia and China together...nothing better as having a
| common enemy....maybe one more day thinking about it Pentagon?
| [deleted]
| rocketChair wrote:
| Sanctions against countries are sanctions against populations. It
| doesn't work.
| threeseed wrote:
| Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work.
|
| And given that the alternative involves killing people it's
| probably the best path we have.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work."
|
| I am not aware of any successful one?
|
| "And given that the alternative involves killing people it's
| probably the best path we have. "
|
| And why is that the only alternative?
|
| How about targeted sanctions against actually responsible
| people with ties to the government?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > How about targeted sanctions against actually responsible
| people with ties to the government?
|
| Funny thing is that local population usually does not like
| higher-ups and will welcome those sanctions.
| iworshipfaangs2 wrote:
| > Targeted sanctions have historically been shown to work.
|
| Do you mind providing an example or two, with a sentence
| about how they "worked?" I ask because I can't think of any
| sanction that had any result besides further impoverishing
| the people while the leader stayed in power.
|
| But I am a layman and I would be happy to be proven wrong.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >And given that the alternative involves killing people it's
| probably the best path we have
|
| This argument pretends sanctions don't kill people. Limiting
| trade with a country makes it difficult for people in that
| country to get access to affordable drugs, killing many
| people with treatable diseases. We have seen this in Iran,
| where people with diabetes struggle to get insulin,
| haemophiliacs die unable to find necessary medication, and
| treatable cancers kill victims of all ages.
|
| Further, lowering the wealth of a nation will make it harder
| for the poor to get the basic necessities like food and
| shelter.
|
| Targeted sanctions may work differently, but they're far less
| proven than you claim.
| wonnage wrote:
| The alternative is minding your own goddamn business if
| you're not willing to commit to the necessary coercive steps.
|
| Sanctions targeted at an individual are useless when they
| live in an unfriendly country. And sanctioning the whole
| country results in NK. Great, you've sent millions of people
| back to medieval life and dear leader still gets to hang out
| with Dennis Rodman when he wants. Very effective.
| theginger wrote:
| Surely anyone associated with this 'restricted party' should also
| be locked out of iCloud not just developer accounts.
|
| Bricking half a country's phones might create some negative
| publicity.
| vanusa wrote:
| This may be a (very sloppy) overfit or some other kind of error
| on Apple's part.
|
| It is difficult to parse the official sanctions directives - but
| from my understanding they target only certain individuals and
| institutions - not the country (or its entire banking system) as
| a whole.
| threeseed wrote:
| Or this could be an isolated incident where the developer is
| tied to oligarchs or the government. If you look at the
| sanctions list posted below there isn't anything that says "ban
| all developers".
|
| Bit early to be jumping to conclusions either way.
| aritmo wrote:
| Are there actually such sanctions against Belarus?
| [deleted]
| judge2020 wrote:
| Yes, the general list https://home.treasury.gov/policy-
| issues/financial-sanctions/...
| ameshkov wrote:
| Tbh I thought these sanctions are against govt officials and
| not the general population.
| aritmo wrote:
| I did not know that the US had indiscriminate sanctions
| against Belarus.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Regarding [0], it's a pretty broad executive order and
| Apple might be making the hard decision to block anyone
| that could possibly have been been in violation of the EO.
| Some particularly hard things to enforce:
|
| > the following persons are blocked...:
|
| > (v) to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have
| directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in,
| any of the following:
|
| > (A) actions or policies that threaten the peace,
| security, stability, or territorial integrity of Belarus;
| ... (E) public corruption related to Belarus
|
| > (vi) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided
| financial, material, or technological support for, or goods
| or services to or in support of, any activity described in
| subsections (v)(A)-(E) of this section or any person whose
| property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to
| this order; or
|
| > (vii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or
| purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or
| indirectly, the Government of Belarus or any person whose
| property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to
| this order.
|
| So, i'm no expert in sanctions, but it seems that anyone
| who made an app used by Belarusian KGB or other government
| organization could be sanctioned.
|
| 0: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/126/20210809_bela
| rus_...
| molind wrote:
| I'd prefer to remove my app from being used in Belarus
| than being banned myself.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I have a feeling that if Belarus is part of a Ukraine invasion,
| this will just be a warmup. On the bright side, not having an
| Apple developer account won't make much difference when you can't
| purchase anything more advanced than a graphing calculator.
|
| That being said, war is dumb and I sincerely hope cooler heads
| prevail.
| rendall wrote:
| This is a terrible, terrible idea. What percentage of these devs
| have anything at all to do with Lushenko?
| surfer7837 wrote:
| That's the point. It's so they can pressure their government
| [deleted]
| ssijak wrote:
| Sure. Bunch of angry devs will pressure a lifelong dictator
| lol People living in a fairy land. What will happen is that
| ordinary people will suffer the most and loose whatever
| decoupling to government they have, and government will have
| the same power over people or even greater under pretense
| that they now have to do bunch of random horrendous things to
| fight evil foreign powers. And I speak from first hand
| experience. Yugoslavia in the 90ties.
| rendall wrote:
| People who don't have to worry about feeding and sheltering
| their families are in a much better position to pressure
| their totalitarian governments.
| from wrote:
| "Terrorism, regime destabilization, and policy change related
| objectives are by far more often assessed as failed, as
| compared to the other policy objectives. Overall, the average
| success rate [of sanctions] of around 34% across different
| policy objectives is very much in line with the effectiveness
| rate of 34% that is reported in the analysis of Hufbauer et
| al. (2007) and falls in the middle of the success rates
| ranging between 27% and 37% form Threat and Imposition of
| Economic Sanctions (TIES) database of Morgan et al. (2014)."
|
| The paper also notes that "the success rate of sanctions has
| gone up until 1995 and fallen since then."
|
| http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~cas86/GSDB_FKSYY.pdf
|
| 20-35% success rate of sanctions has been replicated a bunch
| of times. Sanctions are the foreign policy experts form of
| collective punishment. It seems they largely exist to satisfy
| the bureaucrat's need to "do something."
| inglor_cz wrote:
| That sounds suspiciously like Western logic.
|
| If a random individual attempts to "pressure" an autocratic
| government, they will land in prison or fall out of their
| window.
| grujicd wrote:
| I was on the receiving end of sanctions in Serbia during
| 90-ties. That felt very, very unfair, since they also affect
| people like me who were against government.
|
| They're also countereffective, since dictatorship uses it to
| push story that "they are against out people, we all suffer
| but if we stand together (under our rule) we'll prevail". And
| from what I saw at that time, people redirected their hate
| from government to evil foreign enemies. This seems to be the
| pattern in other countries where sanctions are pushed. They
| really make life worse for ordinary people, not those in
| power, who even use it for their own benefit.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Let dictators push whatever story they want. Serbia was a
| belligerent pariah and suffered economically for it. When
| the dictator was ousted it stopped being a belligerent
| pariah and benefited economically from that. That's all
| that matters in the long run.
| [deleted]
| cabirum wrote:
| The developers must have realized that their income depends on
| devices controlled by a hostile regime.
| [deleted]
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I have seen these kind of BS for years on HN now (admittedly most
| of them from Google). I have decoupled from all those big
| companies so they can't literally destroy me. I use some of their
| service but it would be of no consequence if they banned me
| (YouTube account for example).
|
| I encourage you all to get back your freedom. It's not sexy or
| easy but it's better than loosing everything someday because a
| stupid law has been passed or on an AI whim.
| ewjij23oijOIJ wrote:
| Right decision from Apple. Lukashenko may force any developer
| from Belarus to integrate a backdoor into any app (no matter if
| they want to do this). Lukashenko may even kill a developer and
| let his security agency to publish "modified" versions of the app
| to do some really bad stuff.
| qualifiedai wrote:
| This is very stupid. Those in Belarus who can make a living via
| AppStore are independent from Belarus government or state owned
| companies for their livelihood. Also they are typically younger
| and liberal minded.
|
| Now the West has taken their livelihood from them, forcing them
| to depend more and work for Belarus state. Same stupid policy as
| with Crimea.
| ithrow wrote:
| _Now the West has taken their livelihood from them_
|
| That's the whole point, make the country poor.
| option wrote:
| That just unites more people around the dictator because now
| he is the one "feeding" them and they can't make it without
| him.
| ithrow wrote:
| Or a rebellion starts eventually, which is one of the
| objectives of these sanctions.
| option wrote:
| This approach worked fabulously in North Korea, Iran,
| Cuba.
|
| Meantime, people close to Belarus gov have no problem
| buying real estate on London, Florida and California.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Sanctions leading to a regime change are exceedingly
| rare.
|
| They _might_ have helped to end the apartheid in South
| Africa. Other than that, zero successes.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Milosevic.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Serbia was heavily bombed in 1999. Regimes do regularly,
| though not always, collapse after military defeats. No
| one wants to be ruled by a loser.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| You're right, the war was a major reason. But economic
| sanctions played a part too, by not allowing the
| dictatorship to continue being a menace to its neighbours
| _and_ recover economically. No one wants to be ruled by
| an economic loser, and kicking the bum out hurts your ego
| a lot less when the reasons are economic, not a touchy
| subject like losing a war. After all, foreign policy wise
| most Serbians enthusiastically supported Milosevic.
| 988747 wrote:
| I think it was Samuel Huntington who said: "Development
| first, democracy later". Sanctions are the direct
| opposite of that.
|
| Rebellion never happens because of sanctions. People who
| are too busy fighting for survival have zero interest in
| politics. That's why North Korea is still communist.
|
| If you are looking for an example of the opposite:
| "Solidarity" movement in communist Poland happened in
| 1980, after a decade of relative prosperity, which fueled
| people's ambitions for better lives.
| davidgay wrote:
| > I think it was Samuel Huntington who said: "Development
| first, democracy later".
|
| Without commenting on the sanctions approach. This
| opposite approach has clearly not worked for China
| either.
|
| [Maybe there isn't a magic democracy wand, alas?]
| FredPret wrote:
| Not yet anyway. Most Chinese are still very poor
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| Maybe we just shouldn't try forcing political systems
| onto other countries?
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| I believe it was Xi Jinping who said "Development first,
| fuck off with your democracy later. But thanks for the
| IP".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It worked so well in Cuba, after all.
|
| At this point I think it's safe to say that rebellion
| isn't even an objective of sanctions. Nobody anywhere in
| the world views that as a plausible outcome.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Or causes a brain drain.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Ah, the law of unintended consequences...
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| That is the case with most US/Europe sanctions. They target
| ordinary people more than the super rich. Iran would be an
| example :).
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Damned if you do, damned if you don't. If they maintain ties
| it's profiting from authoritarianism. If they cut ties it's
| heartless.
|
| We're seeing a return to Cold War dynamics, with a schism
| between China, Russia, Iran and their satellites; and NATO,
| Japan, Australia and _their_ satellites. It's fair to assume
| that our lives will either involve massive wars or economic
| decoupling. To the extent we're picking between worst options,
| the latter will do.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't think we're seeing a return to cold war dynamics at
| all. There's no clear lines. You can see it in the French and
| German reaction to Russia right now that has very little in
| common with the US, the reluctance of Japanese firms to
| actually move out of China at all. Even the US went ahead and
| fast-tracked a trade-deal with China in 2019, don't remember
| that with the Soviet Union.
|
| Two things are massively different compared to the cold war.
| One is that there's no ideological line between communism and
| capitalism, secondly there's no primacy of the state. Private
| actors carry significant weight and they have different
| interests.
| option wrote:
| After MAD, Globalism is the best thing which happened for
| world peace.
|
| If we see economic decoupling the wars will be much more
| likely.
| naveen99 wrote:
| Imagine if us oligarchs split into 2 factions and had a
| disagreement. Maybe 1 faction decided to go join Russia or
| Ukraine, secretly or not so secretly. I imagine real wars and
| real economic decoupling are both proxy fights between
| oligarchs. But it's a necessary evil, because it keeps the
| oligarchs honest and limits their power.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Or it causes a brain drain. That would certainly be a desirable
| outcome with Belarus.
| [deleted]
| molind wrote:
| Moreover, I'm citizen of Belarus, but living in Poland, tax
| resident of Poland. My developer account is tied with legal
| entity in Poland and bank account in Poland. I was banned too. :/
| rafale wrote:
| How were you linked to Belarus?
| molind wrote:
| Initially my account was registered for sole proprietor in
| Belarus. I've changed linked legal entity when moved to
| Poland. That was almost a year ago.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's probably as a result of Apple's compliance department
| action.
|
| It's technically Apple who bans the accounts but it's the US
| government who makes them to do so.
|
| Essentially, there are people and places that US government
| prohibits US companies to do business with. Not only US companies
| actually, anyone who wants to do business with US.
|
| Syria, North Korea, Crimea, Belarus, Cuba etc. are terrible
| addresses to open an account with.
|
| If you remember, Github banned Syrian developers.[0]
|
| [0] : https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-
| coun...
| [deleted]
| lvs wrote:
| There are both US and EU sanctions on Belarusian individuals
| and entities, but no broad sanctions that would apply to all
| developers in the country of which I'm aware. This seems like
| it might be an error.
| detaro wrote:
| Or calculation that it's cheaper to just get rid of Belarus-
| linked accounts than getting into trouble for a few that are
| linked to a sanctioned entity.
| pc86 wrote:
| I find it hard to believe that despite whatever sanctions may
| be in place, the official stance of the USG is that individual
| Belarusians should be targeted in this manner.
| molind wrote:
| But there is no sanctions against all citizens of Belarus. Yes
| some companies that support regime of lukashenko are under
| sanctions. But not everyone. I moved from Belarus due to
| lawfulness in my country, living in Poland and now I'm under
| sanctions? That's insane.
| kube-system wrote:
| Are there sanctions against Belarusian banks or other
| institutions which are necessary to functionally do business
| with people in Belarus?
| sremani wrote:
| Insane probably, but there is always going to be some
| friction and gap between policy and implementation. It is
| good to inquire and understand where the gaps are. You are
| doing the right thing but shining the sun light and trying to
| recruit people to make your case is good.
|
| Let's see how Apple reacts.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Could be specific address or name, we would not know since
| the match in the list is not disclosed.
|
| It can also be false positive, the compliance departments use
| specialized software do a non-exact match since it's not a
| straightforward process because countries use different
| alphabets, address systems, naming conventions etc. So they
| identify potential risky clients and someone does an
| assessment and if they think that it could be a real match
| they pull the trigger.
|
| Sometimes your names is Ahmad, other times it's Yuri and and
| the life is not easy for you.
| nootropicat wrote:
| The supreme irony is that these sanctions also apply to
| political dissidents than had to run away from Belarus.
| Corporate cost benefit analysis applied to shoddily written
| laws leads to unintended consequences.
| ergocoder wrote:
| This could be specific name.
|
| Think in terms of apple employees.
|
| If you over blacklist, then okay that is not ok. That is bad.
|
| If you decide to under-blacklist, you might actually end up
| in jail for a long time.
|
| So, over blacklisting it is.
| dijit wrote:
| One of the games I made was hosted by my company, it's sequel
| was on cloud.
|
| Was annoying because Crimea was not allowed to connect to the
| cloud, but we sold our game there as it was part of
| Ukraine/Russia and there are no trade embargo's from my
| publishers country to theirs.
|
| So the situation was that people who were able to play the
| first game were able to buy but not play the sequel, which must
| have been frustrating as hell- and it's not like the citizens
| did anything to warrant that.
|
| That was annoying, we need European cloud providers really.
| RychardM wrote:
| Yes, today many of developers received the mail about their
| account.
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